On Sat, 10 Jun 2000, Richard Stallman wrote:
>RTFM. man automount.
>
>I typed `man automount' but it gave me an error message. However,
>someone else describe for me what automount can and can't do. It
>seems it can unmount the floppy automatically in some cases, but not
>when it is "in use".
>
>The ability to handle removal of the floppy even when it is mounted
>and "in use" will be important for non-hackers, so I think it is worth
>some amount of effort. If the device is "in use" for an actual file
>descriptor, it would be fine to make all subsequent operations on that
>descriptor get errors. (One could replace all these descriptor with
>some internal magic "always get an error" descriptor.)
>
>As for the case of being "in use" as the working directory, it is
>probably not too hard to handle that case "correctly" by setting a
>flag that will be checked by file-name lookup routines.
>
>Supermount seems to come closer to what I had in mind, and maybe could
>do the job. But some people say it is not reliable. If it is made
>reliable and gets included as a standard part of Linux, maybe it will
>do the job.
>
>But I wonder what happens if you remove the floppy while some file is
>open on it. The program which has the open descriptor will have to
>lose, but the system as a whole should not stumble. What will
>supermount do in this case.
>
> Keep in mind that MSDOS didn't
> provide any caching, didn't have mmap() and even with all that it could be
> b0rken badly by inserting/removing disks at wrong times.
>
>If we want to make the system as good to use as Windows, for
>non-hackers, we have to give high priority to user convenience for
>non-hackers. We need to consider trading away features that are not
>terribly beneficial, such as caching and mmap on a floppy disk.
>
>Caching and mmap for files on the hard disk are useful features; for
>floppies, they are of little benefit. The main use of floppies is for
>file transfer and archiving. Caching and mmap are useful when you do
>substantial work on a file, and for temporary files. But if you want
>to make those operations efficient, the first thing you should do is
>keep the files on the hard disk rather than on a floppy.
Thats all very nice, but what do you do for the "luser" that opens a file
on the floppy using a word processor... I see that a LOT at work (plus the
use of excel/photoshop/exporer/...
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jesse I Pollard, II Email: pollard@cats-chateau.netAny opinions expressed are solely my own.
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